About the authors

Thomas Carpe is a founder and managing principal of Liquid Mercury Solutions, a Baltimore-based Microsoft Gold partner specializing in Azure, Office 365, and SharePoint since 2009. He's been working with SharePoint since 2001, with Microsoft technology for over 20 years. He has several Microsoft certificates, including MCPD, MCSE, and MCITP. He is an acknowledged expert in SharePoint security, and he is the author of a large open source library and several software products built on SharePoint. He resides in Baltimore with his wife, children, housemates, and a menagerie of pets.

I'd like to thank my wife for supporting me through the difficult writing process while also fighting her own battle against cancer, my coworkers who covered for me, and our editor for being inhumanly patient. I'd also like to thank Eric Carpe and Kevin Gagnon for sharing the perspectives of those who haven't been working with Office 365 for many years already.

Nikkia Carter, director of collaboration and training for C3 Integrated Solutions, a Microsoft Gold & Silver partner in VA, has a bachelor's in computer science, a master's in IT project management, and is a CompTIA Certified Technical Trainer. She is a solutions developer, strategist, trainer, and tech speaker. She is a member of the Microsoft Voices for Innovation taskforce and of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners DC board. She also leads the SharePoint User Group DC.

I would like to thank Packt Publishing, especially Sharon Raj, for approaching me to write this book and for being patient when life got in the way! Thanks to Scott Brewster and Shadeed Eleazer for helping to review our work. Thanks to my coauthors for joining me on this endeavor!

Alara Rogers, not to be confused with Buck Rogers or Mr. Rogers, is often thought to be a brain in a tank, but this is not true; she is a space alien. Alara grew up in the land of IBM near Poughkeepsie, NY, and entered IT via database marketing and analytics. She has a bachelor's in psychobiology from the University of Pennsylvania. Nowadays, her main interests are business intelligence, process management, information architecture, and SharePoint as a platform for the rest. She writes science fiction in her spare time, and has been known to reply at length when someone is wrong on the internet.

I would like to thank Thomas Carpe for getting me this opportunity and Packt Publishing for saying yes. I would also like to thank Jane-Vett Rogers, my mother, who passed away in 2015. I wouldn't be a writer without her. And I want to thank Elinor Bowen, my first real boss, for getting me into IT in the first place.